


imperfect light

by FyreLily



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Bonding, Found Family, Gen, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, I like to think of myself as a comedian, I'm Bad At Tagging, also it would look bad on his model, bro idk what im doing, jaune apologizes again lol, on one hand: GIVE OSCAR THE WHITE STREAK IT WOULD BE COOL, on the other: please do not it would not be good for his mental health, ozmosis, take a shot every time I say im going to write fluff AND THEN I DONT, uhh idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29661984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyreLily/pseuds/FyreLily
Summary: The air is filled with dust, and Jaune can only think one thing."Please, not again."
Relationships: Jaune Arc & Oscar Pine
Comments: 12
Kudos: 69





	imperfect light

**Author's Note:**

> heyyy im back on my Oscar bullshit <333 enjoy
> 
> my bestie lex has a beautiful piece of art to go with this work!! check it out [here on twitter](https://twitter.com/ruiieyunie/status/1364320793371492354?s=20) and [here on tumblr](https://ruiieyunie.tumblr.com/post/643948967452884992/i-thought-ozpin-was-gone-jaune-says)!! shes amazing go follow her rn

There was a flash. 

  
A ringing in his ears…. Brothers, everything was fuzzy. 

What just happened?

Hazel, and Salem… on fire… and Oscar-

No, no no no no no no-

Oscar!

That irritating, selfless, self-sacrificing kid-

Jaune pushes himself to his feet, blinking the grit out of his eyes, heart beating faster than he’s sure it’s ever gone. 

Not again. 

Please, please not again.

Dust fills the air, clouds blocking out his vision and obscuring his view. Jaune looks around desperately. Oh gods, gods no, please no-

There’s a small shape, strewn on the ground just ten yards away. Time stops. He can’t breathe. Jaune races over, as fast as his beaten body will allow. 

Oscar lies on the ground, eyes closed. Peaceful. Even with the bruises and cuts, Jaune could almost imagine that he was sleeping. 

He reaches out, pressing two fingers against Oscar’s neck, and waits.

A heartbeat. 

Two. 

Three. 

He’s breathing.

Jaune lets out a sigh of relief. He doesn’t know what condition Oscar is in, after… whatever that was, but he’s not dead. For now, that’s enough. 

Something pale catches his eyes. Jaune squints through the darkness, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. 

A streak of white. 

A gleaming, bone-white lock of hair falls onto Oscar’s still face, a stark contrast to the dark, warm brown. 

Jaune’s stomach flips. 

Ozpin’s hair… Ozpin’s hair had been white. 

And Oscar had just used magic. Enough magic to incapacitate  _ Salem.  _

(Oz’s magic?) 

Jaune’s skin prickles. Salem. Where is she? Was what Oscar did enough to keep her down for long enough for them to escape?

He picks up Oscar as gently as he can, and begins running. There’s no telling how long he’s been out for, or how long Salem will be gone for. 

Or, how long it’ll be before the Ace-Ops blow them up. 

The dust begins to fade, and Jaune can see an airship, and bright yellow hair. He dashes towards it, Oscar in tow. 

Ren hugs him (and Oscar) as he finally makes it over, gasping for breath.

“He tried to stay behind?” Ren asks, glancing at Oscar.

Jaune nods. “Yeah.”

“Well, I suppose it’s a good thing that you’ve got that instinct then,” Yang adds airily, tilting her head to the side. 

Jaune raises an eyebrow. “What instinct?”

Yang snorts. “The ‘wait, fuck, all of my teammates are selfless idiots and I should probably make sure that they haven’t run off to sacrifice themselves’ instinct.”

Jaune sees Emerald and Ren roll their eyes in sync. “Yeah, yeah,” he mutters. 

He tries not to think of Pyrrha. 

There’s a loud  _ ahem  _ from behind them. Jaune turns to see Harriet Bree glaring at him, arms crossed.

He and Ren exchange a glance. The other huntsman sighs. “Well, we don’t really have a choice.”

“So no one thought to tell me that as soon as I got out I’d be arrested?” Emerald demands. 

“Yeah, maybe we should’ve mentioned that,” Ren says.

“And we probably should’ve let her know about the bomb,” Yang offers.

“THE WHAT?”   


Harriet scowls. “Enough talk. Get onto the ship. Now.”

Jaune shifts Oscar in his arms, and walks onto the ship. He is greeted by Marrow, who holds a pair of gravity cuffs. Jaune glances at him stiffly, shifts Oscar again, and walks right past. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Marrow’s gaze drop to the ground. 

Jaune settles onto the ground, resting his back against the wall, and laying Oscar’s head onto his shoulder. He looks up, feeling a pair of eyes burning into him. 

Winter catches his gaze, clearly uneasy.

“What… what happened?”

Jaune blinks, then realizes that she’s talking about Oscar. He sighs. 

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence, before Winter turns and walks away. Jaune’s attention again falls on Oscar. Worry bubbles up inside his chest. Oscar’s breathing. His heart is beating. 

But what if it doesn’t stay that way?   
  


He knows that people die from their injuries. It happens all the time. It’s happened right in front of him before. 

How awful, how horrible, how utterly cruel would the universe have to be for that to happen?

For Jaune and his friends to have gone through everything that they did in order to save him, for Oscar to have endured all that he did while in Salem’s captivity, for all of their experiences and journeys together to just come to an end?

  
  
For all of it to result in a slow, painful death, right in front of Jaune’s eyes. A type of demise that Jaune’s own power could stop, a way that he could still be saved… and yet Jaune would be too weak, too helpless to save him. 

~~ Just like Beacon again, huh? ~~

A small weight is lifted from his shoulder. Jaune snaps himself out of his thoughts, and finds Oscar staring at him, hazel eyes blinking slowly. He looks… tired. 

Jaune quickly moves to help Oscar sit up, resting him against the wall beside himself. Oscar winces, but complies. 

Jaune studies him. “Are you okay?”

  
  
Oscar scrunches up his nose. “Maybe? I’m just very… tired.”

The farmhand closes his eyes again, and his head falls back against Jaune’s shoulder. The older boy smiles, and wraps his arms around Oscar in a firm, warm hug. 

“I’m just glad you’re all right.”

  
  
“I… yeah,” Oscar murmurs.

Jaune stiffens, ever so slightly. “Is there... something you need to say? Anything I can do?”

Oscar shakes his head, causing a few strands of hair to fall into his eyes. 

A few strands of hair the color of gleaming white pearls. 

Jaune can feel Oscar tense in his arms. The Huntsman grimaces. 

“There’s that.”

  
Oscar slowly turns to look up at him, eyes cloudy with a mixture of shock and horror. 

“How… why… what happened?” he asks. 

“I don’t know,” Jaune admits. “It was like that when I found you.”

Oscar tugs the strand down to look at it. “Is there a lot like that?”

  
  
Jaune shakes his head. “Just that one part.”

With a slow nod, Oscar lets go. There’s silence. Finally, he speaks again. “From the magic?”   
  


Jaune hesitates. “I don’t know, but probably? It wasn’t there before.”

  
  
“And… there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  
  
He says it like a statement. It’s not a question, wondering if Jaune is keeping something. He knows, for sure. 

Oscar’s always been good at that.

Jaune hangs his head. “Well… yes. Kind of.”

A deep breath in. A long, slow, exhale.

“It reminds me of Ozpin.”

A moment of soundlessness, then another. 

“He had white hair, huh?”   
  


“Yeah.”

“Old man.”

  
  
“ _ Super  _ old.”

“Yup.”

“Mhm.”

Oscar sighs, staring off into space. “So now even my physical appearance is starting to resemble him.”

  
  
Jaune frowns, concerned. “You don’t know that! I’m sure what you did was very strenuous too, and I’ve heard stories about people’s hair going white from-”

“Jaune.”

  
  
The blue eyed boy stops. He wants to reassure his brother, but… how?

“You could be right… except…”

Oscar tears his gaze away from the nothingness that he had stared at, and locks eyes with Jaune. “I can  _ feel  _ it. Every time I use magic, we get closer. We merge more.”

  
  
“I thought Ozpin was gone?” Jaune says tentatively. 

Oscar looks away.

Jaune’s heart sinks, but he doesn’t pry. “Oh.”   
  


“It doesn’t matter anyway. The merge continues, no matter where he is. It’s not complete… not yet. But the magic I used sped it up. I… I don’t know how much time I have left.”   
  


“I’m scared, Jaune.”

Another deep breath. 

“I know.”   
  
“And… I am too.”

Jaune doesn’t want to let him down. He can’t even imagine how hard this must be for Oscar. One day, he was living a normal life, and the next he learns that his identity has been stolen away in a game of chance? 

Woo-hoo, congratulations! You’re the lucky winner! For your grand prize you get… a thousand year old wizard in your head who you’ll slowly merge into and become, leaving behind any remnants of your own being! Yay!

  
  
It’s not fair at all. Jaune had a choice. His teammates had a choice. Team RWBY had their choices. Even Pyrrha… Pyrrha’s choice hadn’t been easy, or fair. But it was still a choice, wasn’t it? No matter how much of the blame could fall on Oz, Pyrrha had still regained some semblance of control over her life and decisions. 

No matter how much Jaune desperately wanted to point fingers, he knew that in the end, Pyrrha had made the choice. It had saved his own life, and many others, at the cost of her own. 

Oscar had never been given a choice. And yet, he set out on the journey, with no experience, no decision to be made. He’s braved the hardships just as well as the rest of them have. 

But honestly? It’s not like they’ve made it easy. Up until a couple weeks ago, Jaune and the rest of his friends (save for Ruby, perhaps) had been cold and distant, treating Oscar like a stranger. As if he was nothing more than the voice inside his head. 

Jaune’s feels that twinge of guilt in his gut. Argus… what he did in Argus…

All of those horrible things that he said, the way he had treated the kid who he now considers a little brother…

He still hasn't apologized, has he? Not for yelling at Oscar, or pushing him up against the wall. For those actions, he told Oscar how sorry he was as soon as possible. 

The blond Huntsman still hasn’t apologized for what he said after. 

When Oscar returned, he bore new combat gear, new warmth, and a new pledge. 

The boy had said that he accepted that he would lose himself. That it was okay. And that he’d help out with whatever time he had left. 

And Jaune had responded with “Good.”

Instead of arguing, telling him that they’d help him, stand by him, find a way to stop the merge, Jaune had told him that his plan to essentially let himself die was a good one. 

Maybe Oscar thought it was okay. 

And maybe that had to change. 

“Oscar?”

The freckled boy lifts his head from Jaune’s shoulder to look up at him. “Yeah?”

Jaune pauses. “I’m sorry.”

  
  
“What for?” Oscar questions, hazel eyes filled with confusion. 

“For Argus.” Wow, what a way with words he has. 

“Oh. You already apologized for-”

  
  
“Not… not that part. For after.”

Jaune can practically see the gears turning in Oscar’s head.

“Sorry, I don’t follow?”   


  
He takes another breath. “When you came back, you told us that you had done some thinking. That you didn’t know how much time you had left, but you would use all that remained to help out.”

Recognition dawns in Oscar’s eyes, followed by shadow as he realizes what his previous statement was about, what he had been promising. 

“And I replied with ‘good.’”

“Yeah, but… why…?” Oscar trails off. 

Jaune swallows, and turns away. It’s not that the apology is hard to get out. It’s more that what he did was awful, and nobody realized it. Not even Oscar. “You accepted that the merge was going to happen. You accepted that you would  _ lose yourself,  _ Oscar. As if it was okay! And I just… told you ‘good job.’ I didn’t even try to change that mindset. I reinforced it.”

Oscar is quiet for a moment, contemplating Jaune’s words. Turning them over in his head, over and over again.    
  
“Oh.”

“Yeah. And I think you should know that you are  _ not  _ going to become him. You aren’t losing yourself, okay? You’re your own person,” Jaune proclaims. 

Oscar looks up at him again, weariness, and resigned disappointment written on his face. “Jaune, that’s nice of you to say, but-”

Jaune embraces him again, hugging him tight. “It’s a promise, okay? I promise you. I don’t care if we have to hunt down the gods and hold them at gunpoint. I promise.”   
  
He can feel tiny tears splashing onto his shoulder. 

“Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! feedback is always appreciated, and feel free to tell me if I have typos, or tags I should add. [you can find me on twitter](https://twitter.com/sapphicscarlett), and here's my [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/sapphicscarlett). have a lovely day!!
> 
> also, before you go: I just wanted to say that this title was spawned by lex throwing random words at me in dms when I didn't know what to do and me deciding to make a word scramble out of them LMAO


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